Nayef Hawatmeh

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Nayef Hawatmeh ( Arabic نايف حواتمة, DMG Nāyif Ḥawātma ; * November 17, 1935 in Salt , Transjordan ) is a Palestinian politician .

Life

Hawatmeh comes from a north of Amman -based Bedouin clan Greek Catholic denomination. He attended school in Amman. In 1955 he went to Cairo to study medicine, but dropped out after a year on the occasion of the Suez War in 1956. After returning to Jordan, he worked as a teacher, journalist and publicist. He later studied philosophy at the Arab University of Beirut until he received his bachelor's degree in 1967. He completed his academic studies in Moscow in 1976 with a doctorate. Hawatmeh belongs to the Marxist spectrum.

As a high school student, he joined the pan-Arab Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), as one of the first members recruited by George Habasch in Jordan from late 1952. In 1957 he was covertly politically active for the ANM in Jordan and went underground. The ANM was banned there in 1959. After being sentenced to death in absentia, he went through Syria to Lebanon, where he led ANM groups in Tripoli and Tire . In the early 1960s he went to Iraq for the ANM, where he was imprisoned for 14 months for activities against head of government Abd al-Karim Qasim . He escaped a threatened death sentence in 1963 through the intercession of Gamal Abdel Nasser , which enabled him to travel to Egypt. From there, Hawatmeh went to Yemen to join the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) in the resistance against British rule in the south of the country .

After an amnesty by King Hussein, he returned to Jordan in 1967 and was initially a co-founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1968 . After a leadership dispute with George Habasch, he split off in 1969 together with Jassir Abed Rabbo and others and became the founder and general secretary of the Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) - until 1974 under the name “People's Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine” (PDFLP). After the failure of the Black September uprising against the Jordanian royal family , in which the PDFLP suffered heavy losses, Hawatmeh was driven from Jordan like the other PLO fighters and officials and settled in Lebanon.

He was one of the first to advocate the idea of ​​an independent Palestinian state and advocated a two-state solution based on negotiations with Israel . From 1969 he sought dialogue with the Israeli left, especially the communist Matzpen . In April 1974 he launched an international media campaign in which he called on the Israelis to make a peace agreement on the basis of the relevant UN resolutions and the Palestinians' right to self-determination. A few weeks later, a commando operation by the DFLP in northern Israel, which ended in a massacre after unsuccessful intervention by the Israeli armed forces and which Hawatmeh publicly justified from Beirut, removed any basis for this reconciliation initiative.

Since the PLO was expelled from Lebanon by Israel in 1982, Hawatmeh has been working from Syria , where the DFLP receives state support. According to Hawatmeh, the organization he headed lost 5,000 members in violent conflicts by 1987. After 1988, the DFLP limited its armed activities to sporadic raids on the Israeli border.

Twenty years after his exile from Jordan, Hawatmeh was allowed to re-enter the country for the first time in 1990 together with George Habasch at a conference in Amman in support of Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait .

Hawatmeh was against the Madrid Conference in 1991 and the signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993. Together with other left-wing but also Islamist organizations, his DFLP founded the so-called “Alliance of Palestinian Forces” (APF) in opposition to the PLO leadership in Damascus DFLP left in 1996, however.

In 1999 he arranged a meeting with Yasser Arafat and shook hands with Israeli President Ezer Weizmann when he met him at the funeral of King Hussein of Jordan and described him as a "man of peace". This gesture earned him strong criticism from former Palestinian allies in Damascus. In the same year the US government removed the DFLP, which he led, from its list of terrorist organizations.

Hawatmeh opposed Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel. In 2003 he distanced himself from Hamas' tactics and told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that DFLP fighters only fought against Israeli soldiers and settlers within the occupied territories and that he rejects the murder of uninvolved civilians.

In 2007, Israel said it would allow Hawatmeh to enter the West Bank for the first time since 1967 in order to allow him to attend a board meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Israel blames Hawatmeh for the 1974 Ma'alot massacre by a DFLP commando . In 2013, the Palestinian Authority sought permission from Israel to relocate Hawatmeh to the PA-controlled part of the West Bank. Hawatmeh had temporarily settled in Jordan after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Frances Susan Hasso: Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 2005, p. 11
  2. ↑ Michael Bröning: Political parties in Palestine: Leadership and Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, New York City 2013, p. 179
  3. ^ Frances Susan Hasso: Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 2005, p. 12
  4. ↑ a b Al Jazeera
  5. ^ Frances Susan Hasso: Resistance, Repression, and Gender Politics in Occupied Palestine and Jordan. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 2005, pp. 11f
  6. ↑ Michael Bröning: Political parties in Palestine: Leadership and Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, New York City 2013, pp. 179f.
  7. ^ Douglas Jehl: Palestinian Rebels in Syria: Wild Card in Talks. In: International Herald Tribune of August 9, 1999 (English)
  8. ^ Profiles: DFLP. In: BBC News of February 4, 2002, accessed October 23, 2018
  9. ^ Joel Brinkley: Divided Loyalties. In: New York Times, December 16, 1990, accessed October 23, 2018.
  10. ↑ Middle East: Radical Palestinians bitter over Israel handshake. In: BBC News of February 14, 1999, accessed October 23, 2018
  11. ↑ a b Neil McFarquhar: Damascus: Hussein's case leads Syrians To test government limits. In: New York Times of March 20, 2004, accessed October 23, 2018.
  12. ↑ Heiko Flottau: The surrounded front-line state: The regime in Damascus is fighting for survival. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of October 8, 2003
  13. ↑ Khaled Abu Toameh: Marxist DFLP head Hawatmeh seeks to return to the West Bank. In: Jerusalem Post, February 3, 2013, accessed October 23, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Hawatmeh, Nayef
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ḥawātma, Nāyif
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Palestinian politician
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Salt , Transjordan